


The Sound of Thunder

by bewaare



Series: The Collector March [1]
Category: Naruto
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-03-29 13:39:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3898318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewaare/pseuds/bewaare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TEMPORARY HIATUS UNTIL THE COMPLETION OF NO REST FOR THE DEAD.</p><p>Taken from a mission with her parents as a child, Sakura is rescued three years later by an ANBU operative and then thrust into his care when her civilian family finds they are unable to care for her. The only way to protect herself, she figures, is to get stronger. Stronger than anybody she knows, the strongest, and maybe her new caretaker can pave the way to her goal, if only her teammates would stop trying to cozy up to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Skirmish in Rain Country

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NARUTO © Masashi Kishimoto.

In the five days since they had crossed into Rain Country, it had done nothing but live up to its name. The sky had been dark and poured buckets upon them. Even when the sky finally did clear up on the sixth day, the sky remained ominous, the grass tall and wet, and the ground dark and muddy, and the small girl found she didn’t like it very much. Haruno Sakura gazed out desolately from the small window that faced out into the fields from the hotel where she, and her parents, stayed, and wiped away the fog with a small furious hand. It covered the window only moments later and she huffed, forehead pressing against the chilled glass.

“Momma,” she asked, turning, “will it ever stop raining?”

Haruno Mebuki turned away from the kitchen to join her daughter at the window, wrapping her arms around the girl and kissing the side of her head. Giggling, Sakura frowned and tugged on her mother’s hair gently.

“Momma, answer my question!” she demanded.

Laughing, the woman kissed her daughter again and said, “It’s not raining now, sweetheart.”

Pouting up at her mother the girl shook her head. “It’s dark though, and cloudy, it’ll keep raining!”

“Well,” Mebuki said, settling into the chair next to the window and pulling Sakura into her lap, “it is the rainy season and it will stop being the rainy season, but how do you think Rain Country became Rain Country?”

Sakura glowered and glanced darkly at the window as the rain picked back up. “By being terrible,” she told her mother.

Mebuki laughed, standing with Sakura in her arms, and made to go to the small refrigerator near the kitchen unit. A small scuffle near the door caught her attention. Mouth opening in surprise, Mebuki put her daughter down and pulled senbon from the folds in her apron. Sakura’s eyes went wide. Pushing the girl behind her, the woman stared at the doorway hard. I didn’t feel any violent chakra, she thought, nervousness running down her spine. The thumps ended and the door creaked as it clicked and swung open. Sakura’s father stood in the doorway, a far off look in his eyes. Her mother let out a sigh of relief.

“Kizashi,” she murmured, taking a step toward him, “what was all that noise in the—,” she stopped dead and a hand went up to her mouth. “Kizashi? Kizashi, you’re bleeding, what—,”

Sakura’s father shuddered once before collapsing onto his face, blood pooling underneath his stomach as his eyes rolled in their sockets. He was conscious, just barely, but could already feel the grip of death. A man stood behind him dressed in all black with a bloody tanto in his hand. Mebuki gave a sharp cry and launched herself at him. The man laughed and caught the foot aimed at his stomach, breaking her ankle in a single second. Sakura was too frightened to scream.

She did scream, though, when Mebuki’s body dropped to the floor and the man looked up at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the next chapter at the beginning there is a brief attempt at sexual assault. Please be warned.


	2. The Tiger In the Cellar

Anko was a short woman, young, and more than capable of handling the three morons who hunched over their desks in gloriously bad attempts to avoid the hard (read: poisonous) stares she leveled at each and every one of their heads. She thrust her hips to the side and planted her fists firmly on them. The moment passed and the only missing member of the team opened the sliding door, ready to call out a greeting (read: excuse for lateness), and then stopped when Anko’s head turned without the rest of her body to stare at him. Calmly closing his mouth, the man stepped back out from the room and made to shut the door. Anko took three large steps and snatched the front of his collar, threw open the door, pulled him through it, thrust him at the floor, slapped the door shut, and then turned to stare at her useless partners. The three men at the desks hunched over, focusing even harder on their work. The man on the floor sprawled there, quite content to pretend he was no longer alive.

“Our agents have been out of contact for two weeks and nobody thought that was strange?” Anko opened her lashing. “Nobody thought, hey, maybe I should bring this up with our team leader? Nobody thought, hey, maybe the hokage should know. Hey, maybe we should check up on them?”

The occupants of the room shifted nervously and as minutely as possible, knowing any single movement might draw her attention and whatever wrath she might toss out. The door behind her scowling form banged open. As a single unit, the whole room turned. A man stood there, a mask over his lower face, his eyes drooping as if he could sleep for a hundred years and never feel rested, his hair little more than a poof of white cloud on his head. Anko's eyes narrowed at him as he smiled, little more than a crinkle of his single visible eye, and waved.

"Ah! Looks like I'm the last one here! Sorry, an old woman needed--"

Anko cut him off. "Nevermind that! We've got a situation!"

The man meandered past her toward the bubbling kettle near the edge of the room. The counter space was limited, most of the room taken up by desks and nervous bodies, but a small burner of late-night (or early morning, as it was) coffee or tea was still orange. The man took a cup, two spoonfuls of powder in it, and poured in a generous amount of boiled water. All around him his fellows held their breath. He was testing his captain's patience and he knew it, but what was the harm with a little pick-me-up so early in the day? By early, of course, he meant that it was almost six and Anko had called him in three hours ago. Carefully stirring the powder into the water, he turned and let his waist rest against the counter. Now he gave her his full attention.

"Hatake..." she warned.

"Captain," he said, smiling again with his eye, "please forgive me." It was a dopey expression that solidified suddenly, eye hard. "What's the situation?"

Anko stared hard at him for a moment longer then brought him up to speed. "Our agents have gone dark. We need to send an operative to check in on them. And," she added, turning now so that the whole room could see and hear her, "I think it best that you, Dog, go. You're the fastest and the best in the field. These other lumps have all gone soft." She glowered at her team. They flinched under her gaze. Most of them were paper-shinobi, good for tests, reports, paperwork, and those that were good for field work were in the hospital from a previous mission. Dog was the only still on his feet.

Said operative rubbed his jaw. "Sounds fine. Rain right?"

* * *

 A small lump, barely more than a skeleton, was curled up in the corner of the cage. It was naked, pale, and contorted as if in pain, and breathed shallowly in the dull lamplight, but its stillness seemed an open invitation for the guard who settled the lamp on the hook outside the lump’s cage before glancing around. It was little more than a reflex. No one was around, he was the guard on duty, and the lump was all alone.

“Girl,” the guard breathed as he pushed his face against the cold bars of the cage, feeling his insides twist pleasantly when the small child flinched. “Girl, come here, come on, come here,” he murmured as he fumbled at his belt for the keyring he kept there. Unhooking it, he brought it up to examine. As he flipped idly through the keys, searching for the one that would unlock the cages, he murmured to the child, “You’re so beautiful, your hair is such a pretty color, so pretty I think I’m going to rip it out. You’re so pretty, I’m going to rip you up, you’d like that, right? You’d like me to tear you up, whore, well I’m gonna.” Selecting the small round key from the dozens that jingled quietly on the ring, the guard licked his lips and slotted it. He turned it slowly, watching the child tense when it clicked. Pulling the door open slowly, he grabbed the child’s ankle and pulled them forward. In the lamplight they had dirty hair that was some shade of pink, some genetic mystery making it natural.

The guard plucked the girl from the ground and half carried, half shoved her to the opposite side of the hallway where several sacks of rice lay. Without having to shove her down, she collapsed. He grinned down at her, unbuckling his pants. “You’re so beautiful, I’m gonna fuck you until you scream. You love it when I fuck you.” He reached down, pants around his ankles, “I love it when you scream.” Pushing her arms up, he lined their bodies up and held her wrists with one large hand. The other slipped down to her thigh and hoisted her leg up while he leaned down to kiss her. He swallowed her scream as he made to push in and then there was a sharp prickle of pain and he recoiled, his bottom lip bitten through.

Clapping a hand to his face he missed when the girl shot up and was unable to push her away as her teeth closed around his ear and could only scream as he jerked away and helped her rip it off. One hand against his face and the other against his head, he stumbled away from her backwards. He tripped over a sack of rice and fell hard. She was upon him in an instant, slipping his tanto from his belt and shoving it deep into his gut before yanking it sideways. Warm slipperiness rushed past her hands as she pulled the tanto from his stomach. He groped for her neck but his hands slipped as she struggled. Managing to get the armed hand free of him she brought it down and slammed the weapon straight into his skull, almost exactly between his eyes, and watched with satisfaction as his body tensed and his eyes rolled back.

Above her came the sound of heavy footsteps and she hid behind the rice, thinking she had been discovered, but then came another heavier sound that echoed thickly through the wood. It came again and this time smoke began to slip through the boards in the ceiling. She smelled fire.

The cellar was locked at all times, the bolt settled neatly in the deadlock when she rushed up the stairs and struggled to push the trapdoor up. It wouldn't budge and she felt her world cave in. The finish line, escape, was just above her but she couldn't make it the last few steps. Unable to breathe, she slipped down the ladder. The floor was cool and from her back she could stare at the limp body of the guard and feel, in that moment, totally safe. Feet were thumping across the floor above her. There were screams slipping in through the cracks, faint and clearly in the distance, and dull thuds that sounded like nothing she'd ever heard. Somewhere, way out of reach, a dog barked.

* * *

Dog could sense a presence, weak and flickering toward the extinguished side of life, but still alive enough that he could try and save it. In the main building under the floorboards. His fingers travelled over a piece of wood, just the tips searching for any sign of a trapdoor. They caught. Carefully, with the tips of his fingernails, he pried the floorboards open.

There, just out of the reach of the light, was a tiny figure. At first Dog was sure he was too late, the body too thin to walk properly, the bones trying their best to escape the skin around them, the chest frighteningly still. Then a quiet gasp escaped the body, one that shook it entirely. The form struggled, shaking violently as it got onto all fours and then crawled agonizingly toward the light to stare up at him with wide, impossibly green eyes that sent a chill up his spine. The girl, he saw now that her lithe body held the promise of curves to come, sat up and rocked back onto her knees. She was perfectly balanced, her shoulders slumped, her head titled up. A breeze might have knocked her over, but she stared up at Dog like he was an obstacle to be overcome. Her soft pink hair trailed across her face and down her shoulders, greasy and dirty, but beautiful.

“Come on then,” he said, taking a few steps down the stairs.

She moved with energy he didn’t think she could possibly have, rearing up and slashing toward his face with a short blade. The tanto came within inches of his skin. He jerked back, nearly losing his balance, as she hissed at him and then tried to scramble up past him and into the sunlight. It might have worked if her body wasn’t so weak. As it was, the energy she had exhausted attacking him failed when she got halfway and her legs gave out so she collapsed next to him. Even her arms trembled too badly for her to get a grip on the tanto. The defiance, the blazing rage, faded into resignation almost immediately.

Dog’s heart, which had thumped painfully in surprise, evened out and went out to the small creature next to him. She was breathing hard, body trembling. The fire had gone out of her eyes, leaving nothing but a vacancy that had no desire or expectation to be filled. He made no move toward her but raised his arm, noting how she tensed but didn't flinch, and pushed up the trap door. It had fallen down along his back in the short scuffle.

Exhausted, dirty, shivering now in the shifting temperatures that clashed between the cool of the cellar and the blaze of the compound above, the tiny girl let out a shuddering breath. Dog waited, letting her breathe. He eyed the scene below while she collected herself with a dull glint of respect and a hard knot of served justice forming somewhere near his kidneys. The open stomach of a guard was splattered across the straw strewn floor. From it rose the vague stench of blood and alcohol, the cellar itself sending waves of piss and vomit up the small airways toward him. He eyed the girl again. The tanto must have belonged to the guard. There was no way he was coming to let this tiny spitfire from her cage.

Next to him, the girl in question's body moved. Her arms shuddered as she pulled herself up one stair toward the burning compound, her knees nearly giving out as she pulled herself up another step. Dog turned his head to stare at her. Her head swung and the gaze she threw him froze a small part of him, a tiny prickle of fear somehow managed to work its way into his mind. There was no way she could hurt him but he felt a nervous sweat form on the back of his neck. She would  _try_. So instead of speaking or approaching, he watched as she broke her nails and left bloody fingerprints on the wood as she fought her way up. Above her roared the wooden beams of the ceiling as they blackened. Soon the whole building would collapse. Still waiting, he watched.

With serious effort she made it to the top, her palm slapping on the bamboo mat that lay around the stairwell in a ring. Those broken nails jammed back into her fingers as she clutched the mats and hauled herself up into the smoke and hot air of the building, her first real sight of anything but a dim cellar smelling of piss and fear and sounding like the angry shouts of men too strong to fight was fire. The building was red. She choked in the thick smoke. Beneath her, Dog shifted.

"The building will collapse soon," he told her. "I'm here to retrieve you."

The girl went still. There was something in her eyes, something vacant and terrifying. "Who... who sent you?" She asked, halting over the words like they were unfamiliar stones she was pushing around her mouth.

"Konoha," he said.

The girl, for all her fire and rage and terror, went lax at the name of the village and slumped forward. All the fight had finally and truly gone out of her.  _Konoha_ , she thought.  _Home_. "Can you," she asked aloud, "take me there?" There was a brief moment of silence interrupted by the loud crack of a ceiling beam splitting down the middle. "Can you take me home?" she asked him, turning her head a little to look him in the eye.

Dog nodded. "Yes," he said.

"Okay," she whispered.

* * *

 "Sakura-chan," the nurse was saying to the numb little girl with pink hair and wide, vacant green eyes who didn't seem to be hearing much of anything. The nurse glanced down at her clipboard, tried again. "Sakura-chan?"

The girl didn't stir. The name, hers supposedly, didn't ring any bells. It felt foreign. Maybe like the name of a street she'd seen once years ago, or the name of a town in a story she'd read about. It didn't seem like  _hers_ though. She didn't have a name. Or, rather, she had many names but none of them meant anything. Girl, bitch, slut, kid, hey you, wretch. The list went on. They were titles, not names, just ways to address her and the fifty other small girls who had clustered together in that tiny basement full of overflowing cells and the rancid smell of terror and shit. The girl's hands went up to her ears. It was a violent movement that startled the nurse.

The name that was hers but wasn't hers fell like lead from nurses and doctors and official important looking people that she had never met. They came and visited her. The most important man in the village, an old man with heavy wrinkles and a spotted face came to visit her with a cane tapping out the rhythm of his gait. She could hear him almost from the stairs. Maybe it was intentional, maybe not.

The man in the mask didn't visit her. He remained mysteriously absent, fittingly like a savior, appearing from nowhere to whisk her away from a world of fire to a world of white and sharp sterile smells and soft pillows to vanish. She wasn't sure if she wanted to see him again. She wanted to thank him. She wanted to see the face underneath the mask and decide if he was a good man or not, or to figure out if she could tell the difference between a good man and a bad man, or if there was any real difference. There were lots of things she wanted to do, things she wanted to understand. There were things that she didn't know anything about, but wanted to know, wanted to experience, just so that she could feel like she was alive.

Right now she felt like a husk. Names and facts falling against her like tiny stones.

Days passed like this. Eventually she let them call her by the name they wanted, unsure of how it was any different from the men who had owned her, and responded to it and took her antibiotics without protest and let them feed her and give her odd tasting liquids that didn't make her eyes heavy. Sometimes she woke up screaming. Sometimes a heavy rain pounded against the windows and she felt like her skin was going to boil off if thunder boomed one more time. Eventually, after a blur of days she didn't quite remember afterwards, they let her out of her room. A nurse she sort of knew with soft black hair took her down a long hallway of winding steps that felt like a familiar tunnel of perpetual darkness. It was so familiar that she stopped and had to choke down terror. Sweat poured down her back. Her hands shook.

It wasn't  _that_ place because she had seen  _that_ place blacken to ashes and collapse into the dirt.  _That_ place was gone. It was hard to focus on that fact when her system was running overload critical and she thought she might pass out. The nurse's hands were insistent and utterly unhelpful. She let herself be tugged along when she found she no longer had the will to move on her own. When a light appeared at the end of the tunnel she had to stop again. Beyond it was the world.

Stepping out into that vague green she could see would change things, make her days of terror a real concrete memory rather than a hazy nightmare that seemed to go on forever. It would make her suffering real. It would make  _that_ place  _real_.

The girl took her first step out into the sun in three years and felt something shift, the first crack in the stone that had crept over her and forced the name down. Haruno Sakura didn’t feel right, but it didn’t feel entirely wrong either. She felt warmth on her face and she blinked owlishly. Looking up toward the source of light, she felt another chunk of her armor chip and another warmth, salty, gathered in her eyes. The light blurred, a kaleidoscope of bright and she blinked. Tears dripped down her cheeks. They were thick, bitter, and she felt her heart thump painfully in her ribs. She let out a tiny sound.

“Uhh…”

The first breath she took of fresh, open air filled her lungs and she let out a terrible loud sound. It shattered the air around her. It kept coming, lulling in as she took a breath then returning full force.

A distressed nurse, one with whom Kakashi was unfortunately well acquainted, rushed up to him. “Kakashi-san!” they gasped, indicating the screaming girl wildly.

Settled comfortably in a wide tree branch, the man shrugged. “Leave her be,” he advised.

“But—,” the man began.

“She survived that hellhole. She’s earned it. She survived where others died, so she’s earned it,” he mumbled, ignoring the jagged memories of hollow faces full of dead eyes and the dull crackle of fire.


End file.
